Life as it arrives and dreams as they happen

Blip and Faith

We had a Bippy with Dick and Dan on Laugh-In, and it was funny, not to mention Goldie Hawn-alicious. Now though there is a“Blip” that affects our lives. Isn’t a generational misspelling, it is a world changing misstep of perception. If you Google “Blip on the Screen” there are just under a million hits. They include lyrics from a band on Youtube, political white water and the obvious aviation lingo for anything between Area 51 and a flock of seagulls (Score!). These references all make sense, and are the perfect noun and verb explanation; they just stop short of the Blip’s evolution.

Between your morning coffee and lunch today, you probably Tweeted (just added to the dictionary this week by the way), gone to Face Book, maybe commented on a chat or collector board, a Blog like this one, or visited an online auction site such as Ebay. All of these represent a Blip in your life and how lightly we are affected by these invisible daily decisions.

The generation I came from and now live saw a man walk on the moon. Sitting in my toy and gothic crazy office, I shut my eyes now and experience that grainy audio and video memory, of what is still hard to wrap my head around. Recently, we sent the last Space Shuttle (SHUTTLE people!!) into space, and it was a “blip” on our lives that day, as we discussed Casey Anthony, the new royal couple and notwithstanding, the death of former first lady Betty Ford among other things. Accomplishments good and bad have become so common place; we are almost immune to them. This may explain why the future adults of America have no imagination or are even inclined to do anything unless it is connected to reality TV or Youtube fame, video games or instant gratification.

The computer keyboard has given us the power of the Gods, which is rarely realized and it is minimized to a mere “Blip” on our screen of life. We once relied on radio, newspapers, monthly magazine reports or a single 5:00pm television newscast for our news, we took it seriously. It was thought through, recorded it to our historical memory and passed it along in real one-on-one conversation with people in our lives. Change may have been slow, but it was done after serious deliberations and there was more often than not a life changing result.

Sitting across the table from a friend, she placed bids on Ebay one afternoon. I was amazed as she just typed in random numbers equaling hundreds of dollars. It wasn’t “real” money on the screen you see, she didn’t have it in her coin purse (ask your parents what that is) and the bank wouldn’t log it in her bank book (again go ask). Those blips of numbers that electronically “bought” something hundreds of miles away just happened on her kitchen table. Made me think of another kitchen table where I helped lick green stamps (no they weren’t eco-friendly Government food subsidizations) hoping to buy an electric blanket. That was real, no blip. Also real, was when my friend got a call months later, from Capital One saying her invisible credit account had reached the real $33,000 limit – she laughed and I was stunned, my first house cost $48,000 in 1978 and that was no blip!

When we buy, “talk”, and comment across a computer screen, someone needs to remind us it is REAL, not just a Blip like a long gone game of Pong (go ask). There are troubled teenagers bullied by blips of invisible prejudice who take their very real lives, people are committing horrific crimes for no other reason that to get a Web address blip of 15 minutes, not caring about the real pain they cause others. AC/DC plugged us in many years ago to the knowledge of a Highway to Hell, and in 1983, when we all welcomed the first blip on an Information Superhighway I don’t think we made the connection. So before you put stop reading this Blip of a Blog and maybe go place an invisible bid on Ebay, download a pirated movie or audio file (used to call those 45’s) do something today that is more than a fabrication of a fibrillation – take a step for Faith.

In Central Point Oregon, a very real little girl will silently end life in a few weeks, never seeing the age of 10. She is not alone, along with thousands of other children that have been cursed with a medical death sentence, in her case it is cancer. Through bright eyes and laughter, all she asks for is a real post card and a Face Book “Like,” so she knew she had friends in her short life. Her list of Face Book friends has “blipped” to over 23,000, which is more than the population of her city. That small gesture not unlike a bid on Ebay is easy to do and will get you something wonderful in return – Faith.

Life has become disposable, on the run, a blip on the radar and always there at the touch of an electronic button. I guess that is because for most of us unthinking, distracted and selfish souls, we know we have another day to make it right or do it again. In other words, we have faith things will turn out okay – but guess what folks, that isn’t always the case. Every Blip in life has the possibility to become a Bleep @!(&$*(!#&%*#%, and those are very, very real and life changing.

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Writer, dreamer of dreams - savior of lost toys before the night gets dark. I can be found behind the keys of my computer writing wrongs, which have come to mind.
http://www.mzlks.net/
My latest book Stiletto is now on Amazon!

2 thoughts on “Blip and Faith”

thank you Auntie Lori. . . . She has touched so many people in our valley and the love reaching out to help this little warrior princess in her battle has been very heart touching and humbling to see and in my case being able to take place in many of the events in her honor have made me so proud to live in the Rogue Valley. Now her story and fight are literally touching people world wide daily. FAITH. .. the heart believing in what the eyes can not see.

One of the real “successes” that can be rejoiced in over the 20th century, a change that many of my generation have witnessed (and benefitted from) is the drastic reduction in the rate a of infant and child mortality in much of the “developed” world. Mortality. That’s a cold, technical word that the CDC likes to use, in the hopes that they can track the trend without using the big bad word—death.
In the first quarter of the last century, my great-aunt lost the only child she ever carried to term because she (and her doctor) chose to deliver that little boy at home–ironically, about 10 blocks from a hospital–because the technology that could have told her that her pelvis would not accommodate his head had not been invented yet. The absence of that small boy was a palpable PRESENCE in her house, as long as she lived. She already had his name picked out—Milton–and after a full-term pregnancy he was definitely a REAL child to her. He just never had a chance to live. My father’s mother had three children—my daddy, his older brother, and his little sister, Mary. There are so many adorable pictures of Mary, Sawyer, and John. I remember asking who that little girl was, and I was told who she was, and that she had died at the age of four of spinal meningitis. I didn’t know what THAT meant, but I understood that she had died, and I glimpsed the sorrow in my grandmother’s soul whenever she talked to me about Mary. I could see it in her eyes.My uncle John’s wife had NINE miscarriages before she finally carried a baby (my only first cousin) to term. Before the medical breakthroughs which happened in the last century, miscarriage, stillbirths and disease were so commonplace that it wasn’t unusual for a woman to lose half of the babies she conceived, before, during and after birth.
Cancer has been recognized since about 1600bc, and since then the medical community has made incredible strides in diagnosis and treatment. But there are still types of cancer that cannot be cured. I believe that cancer in small children is relatively rare, but to me the saddest term I have ever heard, worse than all man-made disasters and natural disasters, is the phrase “Pediatric Oncology.” When I was going to the hospital for radiation myself, in 2001, I first saw a sign with that awful term on it and it literally made me stop in my tracks. I couldn’t imagine anything so horrible, and so prevalent, that it would deserve its own medical specialty. Since then, I’ve learned a lot—a lot more that I almost wish I HADN’T learned—about Pediatric Oncology. And one of the miracles I have observed in this past decade is that many of the children battling cancer, and those who are losing the battle, can be so accepting, so fearless about something which I found frightening. This little girl in Oregon, Faith, is so much braver than I am that I wonder at the strength of her fearlessness, and her lovely, smiling little face despite the cancer that is quickly ending her life. I wish I could give her a cure, a miracle, but all I can give her is something she already has—something that is a struggle for me and for many other adults I know–Faith. My heart goes out to her, and I won’t forget her. Many, many people will never forget her, for the rest of THEIR lives. Thank you, Lori, for introducing me to this beautiful child.